


Set in Motion

by cordeliadelayne



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Drama, Friendship, Gen, Introspection, Loyalty, Magic Revealed, Male Friendship, Male-Female Friendship, Present Tense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:34:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25595848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cordeliadelayne/pseuds/cordeliadelayne
Summary: Merlin's magic has never been his alone.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 68





	Set in Motion

“It would be really helpful,” Merlin says, turning towards Leon and Gwaine who are standing directly behind him, swords raised, “if you hang back a bit before you kill me.”

Leon looks adorably confused and Gwaine's eyes narrow suspiciously but before Merlin can really think about anything other than Arthur in danger, _again_ , he turns back to the magically sealed door to the throne room, raises a hand and blasts it open with his magic.

Arthur is on his knees, his hands tied behind his back with the assassin standing behind him, sword raised to strike. Arthur turns at the sound of the door but the assassin doesn't and Merlin shoots Arthur a look that he hopes is apology and you'll be fine all wrapped up in one and then raises his hand and makes the assassin stab himself in his leg instead of decapitating Arthur.

Gwaine says something behind him and moves towards the assassin to make sure he stays down but Leon, Leon who has known Arthur longer than all of them, Leon who has fought more sorcerers than any of them combined, has the point of his sword pressing at Merlin's spine and Merlin doesn't know if he should say something or move forward or wait patiently to be killed.

Then Arthur is awkwardly standing and looking at Merlin like Merlin has grown another head, which might in all normal circumstances be less surprising than discovering he has magic and Merlin stays perfectly still even as other guards come into the room to help their king.

Gwaine has handed off the assassin to the guards by now and they are dragging him away to get his wound treated and to be questioned about who sent him and it all feels terribly familiar, if not in equally unfamiliar ways. And Merlin can't stop staring at Arthur and Arthur can't stop staring at Merlin, only Arthur looks considerably more betrayed than Merlin has ever seen.

And he knows, of course he knows, has always known, that Arthur would feel like this but it still hurts to see how much pain Arthur is in right now, and that he is the cause of all of it.

“Get these off me,” Arthur snaps at Gwaine who shoots a quick look at Merlin before freeing Arthur's hands.

Arthur rubs at his wrists as the rope falls to the ground and still Merlin stays still. He'd rather hoped by now that Arthur wouldn't kill him for this, whenever this came out, but there's always been a little part of him that worried that Arthur would flip completely and kill him before he'd had time to think about it, or Merlin had had time to blink.

As it is Arthur takes two steps forward and then stops. He looks at the door and then back at where the assassin had been, where there is a small pool of blood and a discarded sword.

“Will he die?”

“No,” Merlin says quickly and certain, “I made sure to miss anything important.”

“Not incompetent at everything then,” Arthur says, and it might have been a joke before but now it sounds more like a threat and no one is smiling.

“Sire?” Leon says and in that question is a thousand other questions about what they are going to do with Merlin, what they are going to do with the assassin and how can they be sure that Merlin isn't the one that sent him.

Merlin hears it as if it's been spoken and hopes they all, even Leon, knows it is ridiculous to suggest that Merlin would ever hurt Arthur but Merlin also knows that they've all seen far more of the bad that magic can do than the good, even Merlin himself.

Arthur sighs and closes his eyes for a moment. He looks tired. He's looked tired for most of the past week with treaty signings and entertaining visitors and dealing with villagers from lands where the crops had ceased to grow and trying to help everybody as best he could and make sure no one was left behind. And now he probably hasn't got a servant to make sure he eats and draw him a warm bath because Merlin can't make himself apologise for just saving his life even though he probably should.

“Arthur! Arthur are you all right?” Gwen asks, running into the room and skidding to a halt as she sees Merlin with a sword pressed to his back and Arthur takes a moment to hug his wife to him and then turns to her and says “Merlin has magic,” just like that.

Gwen looks incredulous, as well she might, and Merlin avoids her eyes as she searches his face and then Arthur's for some sign that this is an overly elaborate joke and the world hasn't tilted on its axis and smashed to pieces.

“Magic?” Gwen says, quietly, because it isn't a joke and she and Merlin have been friends for years and Merlin can see now that Arthur was testing to see if she had any idea, and for the sake of their marriage and all of Camelot it's probably a good thing that she hadn't.

“Yes,” says Arthur. “He saved my life.”

There's gratefulness there, if grudging and Merlin isn't sure how to acknowledge it or even if he should. Because Arthur has always been more clever than anyone has given him credit for and he knows, deep in his bones where his magic curls up and hides that Arthur is going through every moment of the past four years and calculating how much magic Merlin has had to do to see him safe.

In an ideal world the scales of his magic use would stack up favourably against all the times that he'd been Arthur's confidante and sounding board but he's well aware that Camelot is not yet the ideal world it could be and here more than anywhere people die well before their time.

“We won't be executing any sorcerers today,” Arthur says and Leon lowers his sword before Merlin has had time to take a grateful breath.

They still just stand there though until Gwaine coughs and asks, because he has no sense of self-preservation and he was Merlin's friend before he was Arthur's, “so what are we going to be doing with sorcerers today?”

Arthur looks at Gwaine liked he'd very much like to punch him, which is still a fairly regularly occurring look, but Merlin knows that Gwaine and Arthur understand each other better than they let on and Gwaine, stupidly loyal Gwaine, would choose Merlin if it really came down to it and Merlin hadn't ever really thought about it until just this moment and tries to school the epiphany off of his face because treason isn't really a helpful thing to be thinking about when your king has come frighteningly close to being murdered right in front of you.

“I don't know,” Arthur says, surprising Merlin, though he isn't sure why. “Who else in the castle knows?”

“Just Gaius,” Merlin says, because outside of his mother most people who knew are dead and that's a conversation he wants to have with Arthur in private.

Arthur nods because the answer is at least obvious and expected.

“How long?” Gwen asks.

“Always,” says Merlin, with a small shrug of his shoulders. “I was born with it.”

And then Gwen does something so surprising Merlin doesn't know what to do with himself. She steps forward and pulls him into a hug.

Because she has heard what he hasn't said, that he has had to hide himself from the people he loves most in the world for all of his life, that he has lied to his best friend every single day since they first met and it has eaten away at him in ways that he will probably never understand.

He tries to blink away the tears but she just pulls him closer and he lets himself raise his arms and hug her back and bury his head in her shoulder and just let her take care of him.

He hears Arthur walking away and realises he has gone to sit on one of the chairs left out after their last visitor of the day, an elderly woman who was so weak from hunger she couldn't stand and Arthur had helped her to a chair and knelt by her side as she asked for the aid that Arthur willingly gave.

Gwen pats his back once and they step a little way apart from each other.

“We will be having words later,” she tells him, seriously, and he nods but he knows it's a forgiveness he isn't sure he deserves but he's also more sure than ever that Gwen really is the best of them.

Then she wipes away at his tears with her thumb and he realises that her eyes are just as wet and he wishes he could find the words to tell her how much she means to him but he still can't find the words to say that to Arthur and he knows Gwen lets him go so he can talk to his king and it takes all his courage to move and with a careful glance at Leon and his sword he walks over to Arthur and drops to one knee before he's really thought about what he's doing.

“My magic has always been yours,” he says, when Arthur looks up, confused. “Always.”

“Merlin,” Arthur says and then stops and Merlin can see him struggling with what he wants to say. “I – I'm sure it has,” he settles on though Merlin can see that he wanted to say something else. “Please stand up, you kneeling always makes me nervous.”

Merlin thinks this is probably a joke but he isn't quite sure so he stands up and waits. Arthur is still seated, staring down at the floor and then over at the thrones, pushed back out of the way. Merlin can well imagine Uther's ghost standing there, sneering at them all and shouting obscenities at Merlin and the pathetic son who has not even considered killing the sorcerer standing in front of him.

There's movement at the door then as Percival and Elyan arrive and there is a hushed conversation that Merlin can't make out except for the word magic said so many times that it's starting to not sound like a real word any more.

“I don't know what to do,” Arthur says, quietly, so the others can't hear.

“Neither do I,” Merlin replies. “This isn't how I wanted to tell you.”

“So you _were_ planning on mentioning it before my death bed then?” And though the tone is light Merlin recognises the layers of hurt Arthur is trying to hide.

“I was selfish,” Merlin says, and Arthur mutters something under his breath but Merlin continues, “I was happy with my life and I didn't want it to change.”

“Happy to be my servant?” Arthur says, a little incredulously. “When you can do that?” He motions towards the door and the huddled knights even as Merlin nods.

“Yes.”

“You are...” and Arthur trails off, lost for the words that would suitably explain Merlin.

“I am,” Merlin agrees, with a small smile this time because maybe it's all going to be all right. Or at least it isn't going to be Morgana levels of a bad day.

“Camelot used to have court sorcerers,” Arthur says. “Before.”

Before his mother died and his father went mad with grief no longer needs to be said. Merlin knows more about that than anyone.

He'd also been hoping to avoid everything that entailed all together, because he doesn't like unnecessary pomp and circumstance at the best of times, but he knows he'll do it for Arthur, even if really it's so Arthur has yet another excuse to make fun of him. This at least is familiar and Merlin needs familiar more than ever right now.

Merlin realises he's been silent a little too long and Arthur is looking at him with something like his old annoyance.

“Whatever you want,” Merlin says quickly and Arthur's gaze is more calculating than Merlin would wish for.

“I won't hold you to anything you've said tonight,” Arthur says. “It's been a long day.”

Merlin doesn't know what he should make of that, if he should pledge his allegiance to Arthur, magic and all, again or try to explain that he might not have meant to tell him this way but he was always going to but Arthur stands up and moves towards his knights before Merlin can get any words out and the moment seems like it's gone forever.

“Merlin is going to his rooms now,” Arthur says, as if they'd been discussing that all along, “and he will stay there until I call for him and Gaius in the morning. Gwaine, if you could see he doesn't get lost?”

Gwaine nods and Merlin feels a little offended that Arthur thinks he would ever considering running away, but only a little because if things had gone very badly then he might have done just that and it's Arthur's way of giving him an out, if he needs it, by letting Gwaine go with him. It's considerate in exactly the way Arthur always tries to hide, made all the better because no one here is fooled, least of all Gwaine who'd gone from serious when he'd seen Merlin kneel to grinning like a would-be assassin wasn't languishing downstairs in the cells and there was a hell of a mess to clean up from all the fighting that had come before.

“Good night, Merlin,” Gwen says and plants a kiss on his cheek which makes him blush and mutter something incomprehensible as he steps around the knights and heads quickly out, forcing Gwaine to follow at a trot.

“Sorcerer, eh?” Gwaine says as they reach the half-way point between the throne room and Merlin's rooms, the exact spot where it would be easiest for Merlin to turn away and head down to the kitchens and out of the castle before anyone could reasonably stop him.

“Yes,” Merlin says, and smiles, because he can smile about this with Gwaine in a way he may never be able to with Arthur.

Gwaine stops and waits and Merlin turns around and rolls his eyes. “I'm going nowhere,” he says, because apparently it needs to be stated clearly before anyone will really believe him.

Gwaine looks Merlin up and down and Merlin bristles until Gwaine's grin comes back twofold. “Always thought you were a little bit mad,” he says, startling a laugh out of Merlin.

“Takes one to know one,” Merlin replies with a smile and carries on down the corridor to his rooms. It takes him a moment to realise that Gwaine is no longer following.

“See you tomorrow,” he calls instead and Merlin watches, amused, as Gwaine heads back the way he came. Arthur will no doubt have something to say about his orders not being followed to the letter but he thinks he'll be pleased as well, that Gwaine hasn't had to choose between them, that Merlin hasn't decided to run away, that there are some things that are constant, even when everything feels like it is changing.

He still has to explain to Gaius of course, which if he's honest with himself is probably going to be worse than when he inevitably has to sit down with Arthur and explain everything to him. Because Gaius has had a long life of secret keeping that Merlin has just been spared and he's a little worried the relief might kill him, if not the fact that Arthur has handled it much better than either of them would ever have hoped for.

But he'll do whatever he has to to prove himself to Arthur, constantly, for the rest of his life if necessary, so that there is never any doubt that Arthur should hold him to what he has said tonight, because every word was true.

His magic is as much Arthur's as it is his. Always.


End file.
